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ABSTRACT
Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is a widely grown crop in tropical and subtropical regions. Cowpeas are referred to as "poor man's meat" because of their association with low-income and food-insecure individuals worldwide. The aim of this study was to use root nodule bacteria to improve cowpea growth. In legumes, atmospheric nitrogen is fixed into ammonia, a form that the plants can utilize, thanks to the part played by the activity of root nodule bacteria. This increases soil fertility and enables legumes to thrive in soils lacking in nitrogen. Cowpea is the most economically important indigenous African cowpea. It plays an important nutritional role in developing countries of the tropics and sub-tropics, especially in Sub-saharan Africa, Asia, Central and South America. In the Rhizobium-cowpea symbiosis, the process of N2 fixation strongly depends on the physiological state of the host plant. Therefore, a competitive and persistent Rhizobium strain is not expected to express its full N2-fixation activity, if the vigor of the host cowpea is impaired. The two bacterial namely Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Rhizobium sp. used in this study were obtained as a gift from a research colleague. The bacteria were scooped using inoculating loop and was added to 200 ml of sterile water in flasks, then the flasks were shaken to homogenized the mixture. 10 ml of the bacterial suspension was used to inoculate the cowpea seed per pot. For the co-inoculation (pseudomonas sp. + Rhizobium sp.), 5ml each of the bacterial suspension was used to inoculate the cowpea seeds. The cowpea plants responded to co-inoculation of Rhizobium sp. and Pseudomonas sp. it was observed that cowpea seeds inoculated with Rhizobium species performed better than other treatment. The percentage seed germination for cowpea seeds inoculated with Rhizobium sp. was 77.7%. Finally, it may be concluded that cowpea with application of 100% of Rhizobium inoculum might be recommended for improving the growth rate of cowpea.
